Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(73)

The rough hide clothing is the least of it. Her hair is matted and wild. One ear blackened and ragged, lost to frostbite. The ends of two fingers the same. She’s filthy, and a week ago, the dirt had seemed rubbed on like war paint, patterns clear. Now it’s smeared and smudged, revealing ritualized scars below. Her mouth is open, showing her teeth, the edges of the front ones filed into rough points. Thousands of years ago, she could have stepped onto a battlefield, a Neolithic warrior woman. Today, she seems to have stepped straight out of a nightmare.

She sees Anders. She sees his expression. And deep in her eyes, there is a flash of realization. A long-buried hint of the woman she’d been. She sees what she looks like to Anders, and she lets out a gasp. Then she spots his gun. Her gasp turns to an animal shriek. She wheels and charges into the forest.

“Maryanne!” I shout.

I take off after her. Anders is at my heels. He’s already apologizing.

I ignore him and run, calling after her, telling her it’s okay, we won’t hurt her. She only runs faster, easily cutting across paths I don’t see, leaving me dodging and darting around obstacles as she disappears into the shadowy forest.

“I’m sorry,” Anders says once she’s gone. “Shit, Casey. I am so sorry. I’ve just never seen . . .”

“I know.”

“She startled me. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

I nod and start walking back.

Anders jogs to catch up. “I know I don’t do as well with this stuff as you and Eric. The hostiles. The settlers. Even Brent. I just . . . I’m not used to that. I’m sorry I scared her off.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I know that was a shock.”

“She’s the woman from the forest, isn’t she. The one you mentioned.”

I nod.

“Everything Eric’s said about the hostiles . . . it still didn’t prepare me for that.”

“She used to be a professor.”

“What?”

He’s fallen a step behind and catches up now.

“She’s a university professor,” I say. “She has a PhD in biology.”

“That—that—”

“Yes,” I say, simply, and the word hangs there.

“How . . . ?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I pause to get my bearings and then steer left. “That woman came to Rockton like anyone else. She’s has a doctorate. She taught at a university. She’s a naturalist, and when a group of residents decided to go into the forest, to become settlers, she went with them. Eric knew her. She’d taught him.” I catch his look and say, “Not that. Just friendship and a shared interest in the natural world. Gene Dalton didn’t let people just go off into the forest so Eric had to search for her. They found a ruined and abandoned camp, with what looked like signs of attack. They were presumed dead. A year later, Eric ran into Maryanne, and she attacked him. She was out of her mind. She didn’t recognize him. They’d been friends, and he remembered her as a kind, gentle woman who loved the wilderness, and then she attacks and he thought he’d have to kill her to escape.”

“Holy shit.”

“He hadn’t seen her since. Then, last week, she was with the party we ran into.”

“The ones who attacked you.”

“She didn’t. She stayed out of it. Afterwards, Eric recognized her. He talked to her, and she was different, more like what you saw. She remembered him, but vaguely. Have you ever talked to a person with Alzheimer’s? If you feed them enough information, you get flickers of recognition? That’s what it was like. Eric was making progress. She remembered who he was. She remembered that she liked him, trusted him. We had a chance there, to get her to Rockton. Then Val started shooting. She winged Maryanne, and she took off.”

“She seems okay.”

I give him a look.

“You know what I mean,” he says. “She’s recovering well from the gunshot.”

Yes, if it doesn’t get infected. I can’t imagine how it won’t, given her state. I don’t say that, of course. I don’t blame Anders’s for spooking her. I came to Rockton better prepared for people like Maryanne, or the settlers or the hostiles. As a city cop, I cultivated contacts everywhere I could find them—the homeless, the addicts, the mentally ill. For me, policing meant getting comfortable with people that I hadn’t often encountered in my upper-middle class life. Anders grew up in the suburbs, too. He’s not cold or cruel or close-minded. He just lacks experience, like the average person who crosses the road to avoid someone talking to themselves.

I find the clearing again and then the spot where Maryanne had stood. It takes only a moment to see what she set down. The “stick” is a raven feather. The “rock” is the skull of a small animal.

I lift the skull. “Predator,” I say when I see the canines. “Weasel maybe?”

“She put those there?” he says.

I nod. “Set them down and backed away. Leaving them for us. She must have heard me talking and recognized my voice. Maybe she expected Eric to be with me.”

“And those are what? Gifts?”

I turn the feather over in my hands. As I do, I remember Maryanne talking to Dalton.

“The boy with the raven,” I murmur.